Editorial: Politics permeates pipeline issue, on both sides

Tuesday

Jan 31, 2012 at 12:01 AMJan 31, 2012 at 1:44 PM

President Barack Obama spent a significant chunk of his State of the Union address last week talking up energy independence for America, with applause lines - depending on one's predilections on the subject - for some of the following quotes:

President Barack Obama spent a significant chunk of his State of the Union address last week talking up energy independence for America, with applause lines - depending on one's predilections on the subject - for some of the following quotes:

"Last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years."

"We can have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years ... The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don't have to choose between our environment and our economy."

"We've subsidized oil companies for a century. That's long enough. It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable and double-down on a clean energy industry that never has been more promising."

Finally, in what might have gotten the most sustained clapping, "This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. A strategy that's cleaner, cheaper and full of new jobs."

Curious, then, that the president would reject the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline proposal, which would have linked the Alberta oil sands in Canada with the refineries of America's Gulf Coast over 1,700 miles of pipeline.

Oh, Obama had his reasons. Back in December, Republicans inserted a Feb. 21, "arbitrary" deadline into a bill to force him to make a premature, insufficiently studied call on the pipeline, which has raised no small amount of controversy, especially in those Great Plains states concerned about the risk of leaks and damage to water supplies. Even some Republicans - perhaps most notably Nebraska's governor - have objected on those grounds. Meanwhile, one of the primary arguments for the pipeline is that it would reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, which might be more convincing if much if not most of the oil refined on the Gulf Coast wasn't targeted for export to other nations.

But make no mistake, the president wasn't going to green-light this project in 2012 no matter the circumstances. He's throwing a bone to environmentalists in an election year. It's politics. (Though one of the White House's big contradictions here is that while the president bragged in his State of the Union on those "public research dollars ... that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock," he was referencing a process called "fracking," which environmentalists are not exactly keen on, either, as it has been linked to groundwater contamination and, as with these oil sands, compromised air quality.)

Obama wants a whole new route - which would of course push the issue past the election - even though the business wanting to build the pipeline says only about 100 of its 1,700 miles are disputed. There is general consensus that piping oil over land is safer than shipping it over water. And never mind that ally Canada is now irritated, threatening to sell its oil to China if the U.S. doesn't want it.

Republicans are playing the same game, of course, for those who are of the mistaken mindset that their side is somehow pure in its motivations. By many an account the GOP's job forecasts for the project have been grossly exaggerated. Republicans did what Democrats would have were they on the other side, which is insert this pipeline deadline into the wholly unrelated payroll tax extension bill, in order to force an Oval Office decision so they could pander to their own base and have one more reason to shine a spotlight on what they view as the White House's anemic jobs record. As always, the proposal could have stood on its own in a separate piece of legislation.

If the nation's unemployment situation does not improve, if gas prices go up - even though this pipeline would have had no immediate impact on them, even though reportedly there is adequate infrastructure to handle Canadian oil flow through 2018 - you can take it to the bank that Republicans will take this stalled project and beat Obama up with it. Need this page remind anyone that this is an election year?

In a sane nation, of course, working toward energy independence from every conceivable source - with an economy and so many jobs dependent on it, with Iran threatening to blockade a Strait of Hormuz through which 20 percent of the world's oil passes, with too much American blood and treasure already squandered in military conflicts in oil-producing nations - and without sacrificing clean air and safe water would be a bipartisan effort.

Alas, maybe America is just not a sane nation. It very much is a hyper-political one.

Peoria Journal Star

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